In a rare interview, Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google, has given Bloomberg his top predictions for 2014.

In the interview, Schmidt concedes that consumers are now buying tablets and smartphones rather than PCs to fulfil their computing needs – a trend that is likely to drive content marketers further toward content that is specifically created and designed for mobile viewing (and then upscaled for PCs). Historically, most content has been designed for PCs and laptops and then downscaled for tablets and smartphones.

Schmidt also told Bloomberg that he took personal responsibility for Google “missing” the “social networking phenomenon”, saying the company should have acted sooner.

More than 90% of organisations that implement a content marketing strategy see a significant business impact through increased web traffic and sales leads. That’s according to a new report by integrated communications agency Waggener Edstrom Worldwide.

The study, Content Marketing: Puncturing the Hype and Getting Practical, examined the perceptions of content marketing and the potential impact it can have on a company’s growth.

The report’s key findings include:

The majority (85%) of communication professionals currently using a content marketing strategy do so to promote awareness of their brand, closely followed by increasing engagement with customers (79%) and generating sales leads (77%).

70% of marketers understand that content marketing helps drive sales leads more effectively, but 18% still have no plans to implement a strategy and over one third (38%) still question whether it can deliver measurable return on investment.

A lack of staff resources was identified as the number one challenge in implementing an effective content marketing strategy (63%), closely followed by lack of budget (48%) and lack of content creation expertise (41%).

79% believe a strong content marketing strategy will help them use social media more effectively, followed by video and animation (70%) and news articles (62%).

The report also reveals that businesses are setting metrics to track success and prove the value of good content. Over three quarters (83%) measure the effectiveness of content through web traffic, while 67% measure through media coverage and just over half (56%) through click analysis.

Chris Talago, executive vice president and general manager EMEA at Waggener Edstrom, believes content marketing enables organisations to engage with audiences and prove their worth as a trusted source of information.

“It has had a transformative effect on the way brands reach and retain their customers,” says Talago. “But with so many voices, getting to grips with content marketing best practice is not easy.”

He adds: “Our research suggests that businesses are starting to understand the potential ROI content marketing can generate, but before this impact is fully realised, factors including budget and staffing need to be addressed.”

Ricardo Adame, corporate vice president of global communications at AVG Technologies, says measurement has always been key to demonstrating the success of his company’s marketing programmes. However, he believes content marketing provides an opportunity to be even more accurate.

“By defining our metrics carefully and building in additional measures to provide context,” says Adame, “a detailed picture is created that enables us to measure the ROI after a campaign has completed and adjust our approach during its lifespan to achieve maximum impact.”

The Content Marketing: Puncturing the Hype and Getting Practical report is based on a survey of more than 160 marketing and communication professionals with decision-making responsibilities across the UK, France, Germany and South Africa. The full results can be found at: www.waggeneredstrom.com.

How many times have you been told that the words used in your email’s subject line can doom it to the spam folder? Or that the best time to send emails is at a particular hour on a particular day? Or that you should only target the most engaged subscribers?

After conducting a careful analysis of a huge amount of email performance data, Alchemy Worx – a specialist email marketing agency based in London and Atlanta, GA – claims that seven of the most common myths about email marketing are in fact false.

Alchemy Worx’s research has highlighted an urgent need for marketers to re-think much of the commonly cited wisdom about email marketing. The exposed myths include:

Consumers are drowning in emails from trusted brands.

Fact: Sixty percent of consumers receive fewer than six brand emails per day.

Consumers like to click the spam button.

Fact: Less than one subscriber per 2,000 will mark an email as spam.

If brands send more emails, consumers simply ignore more.

Fact: If you send four emails in a month instead of one, the number of consumers who will open at least one email doubles.

The subject line can send the email to the spam folder.

Fact: Keywords have little to no effect on whether an email ends up in the spam folder.

Nearly three-quarters of UK businesses are more likely to invite tenders from companies that are recognised as experts and ‘thought leaders’ in their market – provided the content they publish is authoritative and genuinely informative and credible.

This is the key finding of a new survey of over 2,000 UK companies by consumer and business analyst MindMetre Research. The sample – broadly representative of UK business by sector – was conducted in order to identify the level of influence that the convergence of content marketing and thought leadership can play in buying and tendering decisions.

The presence of authoritative content on a company website was found to play a crucial role in helping firms to get a ‘foot in the door’ by providing validation of company expertise.

The MindMetre survey found:

When compiling a tender list for technology and equipment, 61% of companies research possible candidate suppliers on the web and will visit the company website to validate its expertise;

For companies looking for a business services supplier, the proportion rises to 70%;

72% of UK businesses report that they are much more likely to invite a supplier to tender if their website not only describes the sales proposition, but also gives access to informative and relevant thought leadership material;

80% of businesses warn that thought leadership must be based on credible, independent research and not simply a collection of personal opinions.

Paul Lindsell, managing director of MindMetre Research, says: “Companies other than management consultancies are increasingly recognising that they can gain tangible competitive advantage by demonstrating commercially valuable ‘thought leadership’ in their customer markets. By addressing issues in the customer’s market, the company shows that it is knowledgeable about these issues and can help find a solution.”

He adds: “Buyer organisations evidently consider the demonstration of thought-leadership by potential suppliers to be important and influential when deciding which supplier to use. So, while thought leadership confirms its key role in building a reputation for a new entrant into a market, established market players can also build their reputation further with customers, influencers, and stakeholders through the generation of interesting material.“

However, Lindsell warns that publishing “pseudo-statistics” that are wrong, or exaggerated to support a company’s commercial interests, can have an adverse effect on a company’s reputation.

He says: “2013 may be the year when content marketing converges with ‘thought leadership’ to provide a compelling combination of quality content and powerful distribution channel. But amateurism and commercial myopia are very real dangers when it comes to research.”

One company that puts a heavy emphasis on authoritative and credible content is Regus, the global workplace provider. It runs a twice-yearly research programme which provides thought leadership content for its communications in more than 90 countries.

“As the leading player in our industry, we believe that our communications should reflect our expertise through thought leadership,” says Andrew Brown, group communications director at Regus. “This type of content is produced to provide our prospect and client market places with timely, useful insights on issues that really concern them, and that they can use to build more successful businesses.”

You can obtain a copy of the new Mindmetre report by emailing Josephine Ornago at Josephine@mindmetre.com.

Only six years ago, a hashtag was regarded as a simple symbol most commonly used in front of a number. Today, hashtags have become one of the most valuable content marketing tools. They now even appear in many leading brands’ TV commercials.

And it doesn’t stop there. Hashtags have become an integral part of people’s everyday lives – from a teenager’s Instagram photo to a marketing director’s tweets.

For marketing professionals, the hashtag’s short but rich history proves its unique ability to attract attention and help build conversations around a marketing message.

In the splendid infographic below, social marketing specialist Offerpop has compiled some key moments in the history of the hashtag to show how, in under a decade, this commonplace sign has turned into a global icon.

A growing emphasis on channelling resources into content marketing is the single most significant digital trend in 2013, according to a new report produced by Econsultancy and Adobe.

Based on a survey of some 700 business respondents from Europe and North America, the Quarterly Intelligence Briefing: Digital Trends for 2013 report found that content marketing is regarded as this year’s top priority by 39% of respondents (compared with 29% in 2012).

At the same time, marketers’ excitement about social media appears to be waning a little. The report found that social media engagement is lower down the list of priorities than a year ago, as observed by both client-side and agency respondents.

Only 35% of respondents thought social media presented one of the most exciting digital-related opportunities in 2013, compared with 54% who saw it as the biggest opportunity last year.

Mobile optimisation is seen as the ‘big thing’ for 2013 by 43% of respondents, while 35% cited “targeting and personalisation”.

Social media analytics was named as important by only 9% of marketers (compared with 19% in 2012).

Neil Morgan, senior director, EMEA Marketing at Adobe Marketing Cloud, says: “The report is aimed at shining a torch on some of the trends which will have the biggest impact on the way we work as marketers over the next 12 months and beyond.

“It is our first opportunity to compare with the same report a year earlier, and it’s great to see that many of the trends which surfaced have increased in their significance to marketers, notably content, conversion, mobile and social.”

With more than half of online marketers said to be giving email marketing greater priority than building their social media communities, a new YouGov survey – commissioned by Emailvision – warns that poor email marketing communications can negatively affect consumer sentiment toward a company or brand.

Consumers are just as likely to turn against their favourite brands as other brands if they are bombarded with too many marketing emails, the survey suggests.

It found that three-quarters of UK consumers would dislike a brand after being bombarded with marketing emails, while 71% of consumers said being sent unsolicited messages would also make them resentful of a brand.

Other factors that can make consumers resentful of their favourite brands include listing their name incorrectly in an email (50%) and getting their gender wrong (40%).

The survey also revealed that 40% of respondents would refuse to share any personal information with a brand in exchange for better targeted offers, rising to 49% among the over-50s. The only personal details they would be willing to share are their name (28%), their age (37%), and their gender (38%).

Emailvision director Neil Hamilton said: “When a customer purchases from your in-store business, they give you money in exchange for a product or service. When a visitor interacts with your online business, they are giving you their data in exchange for a relevant experience with your brand.

“If a business doesn’t choose to make use of this data correctly, they are missing out on important knowledge that could positively or negatively impact business for years to come.”

He added: “It’s imperative that a customer never becomes ‘just a number’ even in a database of millions. Technology enables all businesses to treat their customers to a personalised experience across multiple sales channels.”

Growing importance of content marketing leads to rebranding of APA as the Content Marketing Association

According to new OnePoll research, content now accounts for a fifth of UK marketing spend and 73% of marketing directors expect their content budget to stay the same or increase over the next 12 months.

One in 20 of the marketers surveyed said they expect their content budgets to increase significantly in 2013.

The OnePoll research was commissioned to mark the rebranding of the UK’s Association of Publishing Agencies (APA) as the Content Marketing Association (CMA).

The Association says the rebrand is designed to “better reflect the work of its members” and to highlight the importance of content in today’s marketing strategies.

CONTENT AS AN EFFECTIVE MARKETING TOOL

In a statement on June 13, the Association said: “The overarching aim of CMA is to promote the use of editorialised content as an effective marketing tool to client-side marketers and showcase the range of channels that can be used to editorially engage customers … from digital – such as smart phone apps, tablet-enabled microsites and branded TV – to the more traditional customer magazines.”

The CMA said it is not surprised that content marketing spend is rising. Research shows that consumers’ appetite for editorialised content is at an all time high. A recent study conducted by Dipstick found that a quarter of consumers’ total media consumption is now provided by their favourite brands.

“This rebrand marks a turning point for content marketing,” said the CMA’s COO Julia Hutchison. “Not only is it a truer reflection of the work that our members are now doing, it will also serve as a bridge across all the disciplines currently involved in creating content for brands.”

She added: “The marketing industry has changed significantly over the last 20 years… No trade association has successfully owned the content space and, as the research shows, with large proportions of budget now being spent on content marketing, brands side marketers want a dedicated resource. ”

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The CMA has produced an excellent infographic about the UK Content Marketing Revolution:

When YouTube celebrated its seventh birthday on May 21, the Google-owned clip streaming service revealed that 72 hours worth of video content is now being uploaded every 60 seconds – up from 48 hours in 2011.

YouTube has also announced that subscriptions to the service have risen by 50% over the past year.

With over 800 million users watching more than three billion hours of video every month, it now boasts “tens of millions” of channels – including countless branded content channels. It is also the world’s most used mobile streaming platform.

Over the past year, YouTube has redesigned the site, and worked to expand its original programming – launching dozens of new content channels. It has also added the option of converting all short-form videos to 3D.

“We’ve come a long way in the past seven years,” YouTube posted on its blog. “What started as a handful of videos shared among friends has transformed into a global platform delivering the next generation of channels to anyone, anywhere, and on any device.”